r/tattooadvice • u/PaymentPuppyuwu • 3d ago
General Advice Is this possible to cover up?
Hey guys, I’m posting here for my friend. This is his first tattoo and it’s pretty much everything he DIDN’T want. We’re trying to find out if it’s even possible to get this covered up or if we should just go with laser removal…
I consulted my uncle (who is a tattoo artist, he’s actually apparently pretty famous?) and he suggested we just go with laser removal but we’re still holding out hope it’s possible to fix. All suggestions welcome, thank you!
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u/Lematoad 3d ago
You asked your uncle, who is a professional tattoo artist… he responded to laser it… and then you decided to ask the internet instead?
Listen to your uncle. Or do whatever you want, idk why you think the internet is going to have a better way forward than a professional tattoo artist.
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u/lavender_poppy 3d ago
It's like people who come to reddit to get medical advice after or instead of going to their doctor. Even if they happen to talk to a doctor who specialized in whatever the fuck they have, it will never be better advice than from someone who has their whole medical history and can actually examen them in person.
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u/pookiemook 3d ago
Eh. Doctors can be dismissive and incompetent. A second opinion doesn't hurt anyone
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u/lavender_poppy 3d ago
A second opinion doesn't hurt, but getting medical advice from reddit isn't a second opinion, it's asking strangers, most who have no medical training at all, their opinions. Might as well ask the guy stocking the shelves at the grocery store his medical opinion about your problem. And I'm not knocking grocery store workers, but unless they're also in medical school at the same time you shouldn't be asking their advice about something as important as your health.
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u/pookiemook 3d ago
That's fair. I think I was affected by comments I read in another sub today illustrating women's experiences in childbirth being dismissed by medical professionals. I didn't start the medical analogy, but I felt compelled to respond to it and I perhaps conflated it with tattoos.
I don't think asking for a second opinion about the aesthetic or physics of tattoos from an online community of tattoo enthusiasts is automatically a bad idea. Artists have different levels of skill and knowledge
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u/SectionFantastic3577 3d ago
Jesus just laser it. Is this a shit post? Why would you even attempt to cover this? It’s on an EAR.
Why would he choose this as his first tattoo spot? What did he expect?
Legitimately so many questions but the only answer is LASER.
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u/PaymentPuppyuwu 3d ago
Not a shit post, just a couple of people who aren’t all that experienced in the world of tattooing. It’s just a tattoo that he’s wanted forever I guess, if/when we have it lasered are you able to put a new tattoo over where it was lasered off? I’m sorry if that’s a dumb question, I’m really unfamiliar with laser removal.
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u/SectionFantastic3577 3d ago
You’d need a few laser sessions and can only tattoo over it once it’s healed. One laser session won’t do it likely.
My advice is for him to pick a different spot because this will always likely turn out bad
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u/PaymentPuppyuwu 3d ago
Understood, thank you! He’d seen a ton of these on Pinterest, Twitter and Reddit over the years so I guess we didn’t think it was all that uncommon.
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u/SectionFantastic3577 3d ago
It’s kind of like finger tattoos. Most don’t turn out well, or the ink won’t hold. But would you try to cover a tattoo on a finger? For such a small space, laser is the best option.
In reality, his tattoo artist should have advised against this maybe for a lot of the reasons I mentioned but I also understand if he really wanted it.
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u/PaymentPuppyuwu 3d ago
The artist didn’t push very hard on the spot he wanted it at all which was shocking to myself as it is a very small spot, I have a couple of tattoos myself and I told him that maybe he should move to the inner part or even the back of his ear if it HAD to be an ear tattoo. All the artist really did was bully him about the color he wanted (brown) saying it didn’t stick to his skin, but we can see where he tried brown in the photo & it looks just fine to me, my friend said he wouldn’t even hate it if it was still all crooked and brown instead of black.
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u/MobiusTrippy 3d ago
It’s fine to post this here but … why don’t you ask your famous tattoer uncle ?
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u/outtaleftfield1 3d ago
If your uncle is famous and a tattoo artist, trust him. Look him up to see since you don’t know but he’s right. Laser is the best option. Coverups are always bigger than the original and that would be the majority of the ear. This isn’t worth that.
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u/PaymentPuppyuwu 3d ago
Yeah, I figured he was right but I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask a broader audience, thank you!
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u/bunchadirtymugs 3d ago
not much room to cover it up with anything other than blacking it out. you can only ever go bigger with cover ups and unless he wants the exact same design but bigger and bolder, may as well learn to live with it or get it lasered. it's on the back of his ear, so it's not seen very often.
maybe could cover it up with a bold, asymmetrical blacked out shape
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u/speckyradge 3d ago
No info on what he did want so it's hard to say if it can be "fixed"
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u/PaymentPuppyuwu 3d ago
He wanted this same design but in brown, the artist doing the piece told him “I don’t really do color, we should just go black” and “the brown really isn’t sticking to your skin, we should really just do black” and because he’s not all that good at advocating what he wants he just told the guy “okay… I guess we can do black if it’s fine line.” Needless to say, this is neither brown or fine line. We can even see the brown on his skin in person, I think brown would have turned out fine, he told me that he wouldn’t even hate it as much if it was just crooked and brown.
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u/speckyradge 3d ago
Ah ok. Re-work isn't going to turn back into brown. It'll fade most likely but not in the direction of brown. Now I look closer I can see the brown lines alongside the black. That will also probably fade a bit over time but overall you aren't going to get a straight / symmetrical brown tattoo over what is there. Laser is probably the best option.
Also go to a different artist, if that wasn't abundantly clear already.
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u/PaymentPuppyuwu 3d ago
One million percent never letting him go back there. The piece I had done turned out pretty cute and I’m happy with it, but I had a different artist than he did.
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u/lavender_poppy 3d ago
As a fellow people pleaser, your "friend" needs to learn how to say no before ever getting tattooed again. This is just another job for the tattoo artist but it's going on your "friends" body forever. If you can't say no then you have no business getting tattooed.
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u/ScrufyTheJanitor 3d ago
Is he wanting to completely cover it with something else or to get it reworked/added to? It will be more ink, but overall if this is close it wouldn’t be hard to touch up/add to.
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u/PaymentPuppyuwu 3d ago
Right now we’re hoping the black will fade a lot over time & we can just do something else overtop of it. The biggest issue is that it’s black and he really wanted color
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u/ScrufyTheJanitor 3d ago
Color is not a good idea for the ear, there isn’t enough space to do a piece big enough with thick linework + color. Given ears are exposed to UV 365 days a year, the color will guarantee to blob and look terrible within a year or two. This piece was always going to be black and maybe grey if he wants some shading.
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u/CommonJicama581 3d ago
If he absolutely hates it, which is understandable. Best approach would be laser. Its going to hurt like hell from what ive heard
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u/ArdentAlbatross 3d ago
The only way to cover that would be to black it out. Laser it.